


only survivors survive

by artemine



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: (tagging as i go along just trust me i'm doing my BEST), Canon Compliant, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Violence, Zombie Apocalypse, it's gay and bloody, it's not really an apocalypse but there are zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-09 20:25:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7815862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artemine/pseuds/artemine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Yet even in the face of insurmountable odds, you wage your holy war without realizing that you cannot save Gotham this time. I ask you this, detective... Who is the madman now?”</p><p>Gotham is put under quarantine after some type of zombie-like infestation breaks out in the city.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. your holy war

**Author's Note:**

  * For [figure8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/figure8/gifts).



> hello!!! it's me w the zombie 'au' no one asked for.  
> it's inspired vaguely by the no man's land arc (look it up if you've never read it, it's super long but it's soooo worth it), which i reference several times. otherwise this is just a good ol' What If: Zombies fic, because i really really wanted to write a canon compliant/with powers fic. so this is me trying it out. i hope you'll like it, i'm enjoying writing it a lotttt and it's a change from the professor au that's definitely more bright and pure than this one. 
> 
> i wanna thank hummy for their quick beta reads on the first half of chap one, you're the best and ilu.   
> have fun!

 

> _“i spent my whole childhood just waiting to move to gotham. my parents couldn’t understand why i hated the suburbs so much. “we moved here for you” they said. but i didn’t want a backyard play set and a white picket fence. i wanted the dangerous hum of the city under my feet. i wanted to live in a place where everyone felt like an outsider. because in a small town there’s no glamor or status attached to being strange. but in gotham, strange is merely the price of admission to the whole gaudy, violent, fiendishly marvelous show.”_

 

It’s the noise that does it. Or rather the absence of it.

Gotham is always noisy. No matter at which hour, no matter in which neighborhood, there is always something or someone keeping silence away from the streets Batman knows so well. Not tonight. The sun rises up in complete silence, and as light starts showing the extent of the wreckage, he tries to collect himself before the end of dawn. Both his city and his heart have been torn apart enough times there shouldn’t be anything left to break, but it is the blessing and the curse of those who never stop rising out of their ashes. There is _always_ something new to destroy. Sitting on the edge of a rooftop, his suit slashed at different places and his cape lamely hanging from only one of his shoulder, Batman feels the sting of a tear in his left eye and decides to close them. Flashes of the evening come back slowly, and he wonders for a minute if he hasn’t dreamed most of it.

        **_11:29_**

Tonight’s patrol starts out with rescuing people from a fire at Ace Chemicals. He brings them to Lee, her hospital being the closest and the one he trusts the most. Most of the people he’s rescuing are from Old Gotham. They can’t afford any kind of treatment from the city’s expensive hospitals. They will need more room soon, especially if he’s too busy saving people to understand what exactly is going on and why the place and every house around is burning. Ace Chemicals, technically, hasn’t been active for years. Batman doesn’t want to know why it suddenly had enough activity to start a fire, but he’ll have to find out.

        **_12:34_**

Robin finds a way to convince Batman to take a break. The bottom of his cape caught fire a while ago, and he only noticed it when it started spreading around his feet. He’s sitting down, his back against a wall, looking at the damage and Lee running between beds, trying to take care of the maximum amount of people at the same time. There are nurses helping, and Robin has been staying here the entire evening, doing what he does best: making people feel better. In those times Batman is reminded of why he needs a Robin so bad. All he can do is bring terrified, shocked and hurt people to a place where someone else will know what to say. He's good at gathering broken pieces. Not so talented at putting them back together. Robin is silent next to him, taking a break, too. He tried to get Lee to sit down but she yelled at him and he gave up. _She’s too old to do all this by herself_ , Robin told Batman a minute ago. _Age doesn’t matter when you have to_ , Batman answered, because sometimes his bones also scream of the decades of mistreatment he put them through. But he’s not stopping. It would be betraying himself and his city.

        **_12:46_**

Batman was about to go back out when Lee screams for help. The next thing he knows, Lee, Robin and him are holding someone back on a bed, convulsing and screaming, their eyes red and their skin paler than death. Robin looks at him over the bed, but he cannot take his eyes away from the burnt, terrifying body screaming its throat away. There’s three of them, and the person – if that’s still one – isn’t particularly muscular, and yet it’s becoming increasingly harder to get them to stop fighting back. A second after Robin asks Lee what’s going on, they dislocate their shoulder resisting Batman’s grip. Lee’s hand is the closest thing to the person’s mouth and they tear away from Batman’s fingers to bite her hand, teeth deep into flesh like it’s nothing. Lee doesn’t scream. Tears fall down her cheeks, and Robin pulls her away, letting Batman sit on the bed over the person he could have _sworn_ was dead ten minutes ago. He reaches for the person’s belt and ties it around their arms. It gives him just enough time to grab something else to tie their legs with, and soon enough he can risk getting up to find rope. Lee is holding her hand, stunned and confused, and Batman doesn’t have time to ask her if she’s feeling alright. He finds rope and ties it around the bed like he’s never tied anyone to anything before. He worries that the rope won’t be enough. He’s just hoping their body will tire before that.

        **_12:58_**

“Did they really come back from the dead?”

        “That’s not possible, Robin.”

        “They were dead a minute ago! I was there!”

        “Nobody comes back from the dead,” Batman says categorically, as if he has not seen it happen before.

        **_01:17_**

“Lee, hang on for me,” Batman says, panic in his voice he’s not even trying to die. _Lee Tompkins_ is not allowed to die. She is sitting on the floor where he was resting a minute ago. People are screaming everywhere in the hospital, nurses are running past. In the corner of the room, a rope snaps and a body breaks free.

        **_01:28_**

Lee’s eyes aren’t focusing on anything anymore. Batman is shaking her shoulders as if it’s going to make it better. He’s seen too many people die in front of him to fool himself, but that’s not what gets him. What gets him is that _she was fine ten minutes ago_. She coughs up blood and he takes her pulse. It stops under his thumb.

        **_01:32_**

Robin screams for help and it chills Batman’s bones. He doesn’t know where to start. The dead person he tied up burnt themselves on the rope but escaped anyway, and is running around, trashing everything, grabbing anyone who gets near. A nurse rests on the floor, a chunk of her throat away from her body, a bite mark on her shoulder bright red. Most people in this room cannot run away, but it doesn’t stop them from trying. A teenage girl with her face half burnt is struggling to get up from her bed, and Robin is trying to help her and ten other persons at the same time. This isn’t a safe place anymore.

        **_01:34_**

Batman sees with his own two eyes the dead nurse twitch and get up from the floor. Her eyes are glossy and it takes her a second until she looks around and starts running, too. The hospital is emptying. Batman is realizing the nurse isn’t the only walking dead in the crowd. He turns around slowly, only to find Lee – or whoever it is – struggling to get up from the floor, slipping in blood. He grabs handcuffs from his utility belt and moves her around to lock them around her wrists. He takes one of his gloves and shoves it in her mouth, wrapping tape around her face to keep it in place. He swings her on his shoulder, ignoring the kicking and punching, and grabs Robin’s arm with his other hand. _We run_ , he tells him. He doesn’t know what made him understand no amount of training would made them contain _zombies_ , but he’s sure of it. He’s seen people bite others back to life, and he has to run like everybody else.

       

The rest of the night is just a blur. When they ran out of the hospital, it was already chaos outside. Those kind of news spread fast. Oracle called him, asked him what was going on. He remembers his light shining in the sky as he tried to lock a group of infested teenagers into their own flat and thinking _what can I do_ . He’s seen cops shoot citizens in the face to avoid getting bitten, and he’s seen Robin himself trying and failing to find any other way to stop them but death. He doesn’t know when exactly the problem has been brought to higher levels of authority, but by 4:30, Gotham is locked under quarantine. It is not the first time Batman notices nobody cares about the people who live there. The first time the city was given up on, it was an earthquake. An evil Batman could fight. This time, they deliberately blow up the bridges to try and contain the epidemic. He will never forget the _sound_ of Gotham being stranded. _The army tried to block roads_ , he will learn later, _but there was nothing that would stop Them_. Nobody wants to say zombies, because they’ve watched too many movies about it to take it seriously. Batman himself doesn’t really know if he can say the word. He’s seen a lot in his city. Zombies, never.

He’ll have to work on the cure. He locked Lee inside the cave, inside the glass case that used to keep Jason’s Robin suit on display. He thinks that maybe it’s temporary, and that things will go back to some kind of normal if people stay isolated. He has to hold onto this idea, because there isn’t a world where Batman can live when the only solution to get rid of evil is death. This he cannot fight.

The sun is up, and he can see the manor far away from here. Nightwing joined to help before they blew the bridges, and Robin and he teamed up to bring survivors there, knowing it would be a safe place. Batman isn’t coming back as Bruce. He’ll make something up. Alfred will know what to do. He’s good with refugees.

He’s about to drop from the roof to the next one and get home before it’s fully day when he feels a familiar gust of wind send his cape flying to his side.

“Bruce.”

Batman doesn’t move, staring ahead even though there’s nothing to stare at. Really, most parts of the city look just fine. If you knew Gotham, you’d know something is off, but the skyline hasn’t moved that much. This isn’t a No Man’s Land kind of wreckage. This is something deeper. Something meaner.

“Clark,” he finally answers, realizing how dry his mouth is. He’s tired. The word hurts his throat on its way out, but he keeps going. “Figured you’d come.”

Clark flies next to him, sitting down on the edge even though it makes no sense that he would have to sit. Sometimes Batman thinks this is the kind of details that made his heart soften to Superman. The stubbornness with which he does mundane things, like take the elevator in his Superman suit, or sleep every night at a reasonable hour or take the time to eat with everyone else. He doesn’t need to do any of this. But it would kill him not to. It’s a particular kind of softness that resonates with the human under the bat suit. Clark’s tenderness is sharper than a knife. Bruce cut himself on it many times.

“I…” Clark doesn’t know where to start. No one really does. “I’m sorry, Bruce. Do you know what happened? If anyone’s got any clue to what’s going on, it’s going to be you.”

“I don’t,” Batman says, and he laughs a little. “I have no idea what’s happening.” He can't believe he's saying this.

It seems an eternity ago since Clark last stood over a destroyed Gotham. Bruce had things under control back then, and had refused any kind of help. He had given him 24 hours to try and do some good, and Clark had left when he'd realize he didn't understand Gothamites the way Bruce did. This was a different kind of destruction, though, and maybe the problem was that there was nothing to understand.

“What news from the outside world?” Bruce asks after a while, because he cannot stand the way Clark silently reaches to him.

“Some of them managed to get out of Gotham. I controlled it in Metropolis, but not everyone was that lucky. We're scared it's going to spread.” Batman knows _we_ is the Justice League. He also knows why Clark was the only one to come for a debriefing. They've learned a while ago not to intrude. “We had to pull Ollie and Dinah from Starling City. Without powers, they're not safe.”

“No.” Batman says, hardening in an instant. Clark’s hand is dangling between the two of them. “ _No._ ”

“I did not come to ask this of you,” Clark answers firmly. “I’m not this foolish.”

Batman squints at him anyway. “I’m not leaving,” he repeats, just to make sure.

“I know.” Clark sighs. “I’m here to help.”

“Go help the hopeful,” Bruce answers, bitterness clawing at his throat. “Go help the ones who haven't lost already.”

Clark moves his hand to Batman’s thigh. This, too, is a foreign but somewhat familiar feeling. A reminder of better times. “I have never known you to be hopeless. You might actually be the most hopeful person I’ve ever met.”

Batman dismisses that with a small hand gesture. “Don't mistake stubbornness for hope.”

Clark shrugs. “There is little difference between the two. You don't stop fighting. That's what's important. I’m here so you don't fight alone. I think a bunch of super-powered beings can protect the states against 20 zombies. Gotham is on another level.”

“I’m not alone. I have Robin, and Nightwing, and…” he trails off. He doesn’t know where Selina is. She isn’t answering any calls. The communication with Oracle has cut off, but he is confident it will come back. He hopes Jason is alright, but he isn’t worrying. He at least wouldn't hesitate shooting. Cassandra wasn't in town, and she wouldn't come unless he called. “I’m not alone,” he simply says again.

Clark sighs. “You're going to need me. If only because this… whatever it is, isn't a threat for me. They can't harm me.”

Batman shakes Clark’s hand off his legs and lets himself fall from the rooftop. Clark watches him with admiring eyes, the ones he always has when Bruce does something like that. Bruce is a man who had taught himself how to fly. There are very few things that impress Clark the way Bruce does. He follows him easily, staying behind, watching his friend swing from one railing to another, his feet never touching the ground unless they absolutely have to. He makes it look like he has done this all his life, his hands moving in a blur, sending ropes flying wherever they can keep him in the air.

Suddenly, he stops, rolling to a crouch on a rooftop. Clark stops behind him, hovering 2 centimeters from the ground.

“Look,” Batman says, his voice an angry growl.

There’s an infected on the balcony in front of them. They look dead except they're not. They're not looking at anything in particular, stumbling around. They look like they're waiting for something. Batman throws a batarang at them. It slices the skin of their cheek but no blood flows. They turn around, see them, and the screaming starts. “Try to stop them without killing them,” Batman requests.

Clark looks at him. He hasn't encountered many of them. Like often in a time of crisis, he helped people. He flew them to safety. Fought his way to safe places. He hasn't stopped to make eye contact with _the problem_ since it started. He tries to think. Usually, he knocks people out when he has to neutralize a target. He flies to the balcony and grips the infected’s face between his palms. He throws them back in the wall, hard enough for any normal human being to black out for a while, never hard enough to kill.

They bump against the wall, shake off the confusion and throw themselves back at Clark, who flies backward, frowning. He can feel Batman’s eyes on him, cold. Batman already knows how this ends. Clark refuses to give up so soon. He grabs the infected’s arms this time, pulls them backwards, trying to make them stop moving around. It doesn't work. They fight off the iron grip until both shoulders pop out of their sockets. Clark lets them go, watching with terrified eyes the infested scream on, clacking their teeth together. He needs to know how far can this go, and he tries to burn off their skin with his heat vision. The living dead doesn't even _notice_ a part of their hand is missing, and Clark flies back to Batman.

“How do we fight this?” Clark asks. “It worked just fine when we were just… neutralizing them.”

“Don't use neutralize when you mean kill,” Batman answers.

“They're already dead,” Clark answers. “They're not alive anymore.”

Batman clenches his fist, snarling. “How would you know? How do you know there isn't someone inside, that knows what's happening? How do you know it's not temporary, like any of Scarecrow’s fear toxins? How do you know there's no cure?”

Clark shakes his head. “I don't, Bruce.”

“Then how can you look at me in the eyes and talk about killing?” There is a long, long silence. They just stare at each other, until Batman grabs another rope from his belt. “I told you it was stubbornness and not hope.”

He jumps away before he can hear Clark’s answer.

“That still sounds like hope to me,” Clark mutters before flying off behind him.

***

 

“This is is a nightmare,” Dick just says as he takes the bottle of water Alfred hands him. “Have we ever had anything as bad as this?”

Alfred looks at him with tired eyes. “At least the manor is still standing,” he answers after a while, remembering the last time everyone was so exhausted and covered in blood. Natural disasters don't happen a lot in Gotham, but Alfred is still dealing with the aftermath of the last one. “At least there's a roof we can put over people's head to help.”

Dick doesn't have time to answer before Robin walks in the kitchen, stumbling only a little. “We have to set up perimeters around the manor, and I think we should recalibrate our detectors in the garden to make sure we know if anything’s coming. The sun is up so I think it's best if we start looking for zombies around the house right now when shadows aren't hiding half the place, just so we can set up security rounds. Also, we need to double check if there aren't any infected in the people we brought here. We can't risk it. Batman’s going to be back soon, but I think he'll want to get to the scientific part first and foremost. We need to take care of the people and-”

“Tim.” Dick cuts him off. “Tim, you need to get some sleep.”

Tim blinks. “No, I need to see with you about security perimeters, and recalibrating the-”

“ _Tim._ You can barely stand.”

“Barely’s still standing.”

“Okay,” Dick answers, because he knows there’s no way he’ll win at that game. Not with Tim. Sometimes he and Bruce are too much alike. “I’ll do all this if you agree to take a nap first. I’ll start the first round, and you can go after me.”

“You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said,” Tim says, staring blankly. “We can’t rest _until_ we’ve done the rest. There’s no point in _one_ person staying up for ‘security’,” he makes little quotes with his fingers, “unless the perimeter is already secured in the first place. The manor is big. One guy in a blue suit doesn’t cut it.”

Alfred puts his hand on Tim’s shoulder. “Dick only wants you to avoid exhaustion, master Tim.”

Tim shakes the hand off. There’s a moment of silence, and he takes a deep inhale. His eyes are bloodshot and he still staggers. “I will sleep when I’m tired enough that I don’t have nightmares.”

Dick closes his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Tim waves him off and moves things around in the kitchen to have enough room to put the Manor’s blueprints on the table. “Let’s focus.”

They’ve been talking for about ten minutes when Batman slams the door of the kitchen open, Clark following. Dick raises his head and sends a questioning look to Clark, who just sends him an _everything’s cool_ thumb up. Nothing, of course, is actually cool, but it is Superman’s job to pretend that it is, and no one ever bothers disagreeing with im.

“What were you doing?” Batman asks. He’s given up on his cape at the front door. It didn’t look like much anymore anyway, and the rest of his suit is just barely hanging to his body, lacerated in several places. He stinks of sweat and dried blood. He gives a look at the map that Tim is drawing on. “Good idea,” he says, pointing at the calibrating parameters Tim scribbled in a corner. Tim gives him a nod and Batman nods back. He knows what Tim is going through. He’s the only one he could stand to look at right now. Dick is going to worry about all of them, Clark is still an annoying weight on his shoulders. He can’t tell him to leave. Every logical bone in his body tells him that Superman is the person they _all_ need right now. He can fend off infected people without ever risking anything. He’s the only person that’s needed around this table. “Clark will do the perimeter check, his vision will help,” he says, focusing back on the present. “I’ll take care of the heat and movement detectors. You two get busy with checking the people we’ve taken in.” He turns to Alfred, breathing heavily. Dawn is always complicated for him. “Do you have enough supplies to make food for everyone?”

Alfred looks back at him. “Of course, Master B.”

Batman is about to say something else when he hears loud noises in the living room. Shouts or screams, he doesn’t know which. He hurries out of the kitchen, followed closely by Dick and Tim. There is more people than he expected in there, but this makes him feel better about their chances. Most people were able to run. Most people were saved. Most people found solace in the Manor. And yet, everyone is scuttling to one side of the big living room. The cause of this sudden crowd movement is easily identifiable. On one end, people are pushing each other to get out of the way. On the other, there’s a body lying on the floor, and someone else crying over it. Batman has seen that same image many times to know what this is about. He braces himself for the moment the dead body will rise up, and goes over his options. The best thing to do would be to get the cadaver while it’s still one, and go lock it up in the cave before it hurts anyone else. They can’t risk a chain reaction inside the Manor. The only problem is that the girl crying over the body isn’t ready to let go, and Batman isn’t too sure about tearing it away from her. He’s pondering about letting her mourn for a few seconds more, lacking his usual reactiveness, when suddenly the body _twitches_. It twitches once, then twice, then it starts convulsing, and the crowd’s anxiety goes up one notch. They’re all screaming at each other and at him to do something, and he’s just standing there, calculating how much rope he’ll need to make sure the infected isn’t going to tear themselves free.

The infected opens their eyes, and Batman closes his.

A shot suddenly rings out, and everything is deadly silent.

Batman opens his eyes. He follows the trajectory of the bullet that just lodged itself in the brain of the infected and sees a familiar red helmet. The kid - _he’s not a kid anymore,_ a voice inside Batman’s head informs him - is holding a rifle and is slowly lowering it to his waist. There are hushed whispers in the room. Someone thanks him. Batman just stares.

“Missed me?” Jason shouts across the living room. “Figured you’d need an expert on people rising from the dead.”

 


	2. goodnight gotham

Batman doesn’t know how he went from the kitchen to the other end of the dining room so fast, but he’s got his gloved hand around Red Hood’s throat. The trigger happy vigilante is being held three centimeters above the ground, and Batman can imagine his grimace behind his mask.

“Not in my house,” Batman says through clenched teeth, low enough that no one else will hear the words. He doesn’t know what he’s really referring to: the gun, the murder, or Red Hood himself.

“Let him go,” someone shouts. “It’s not like there was anything else anyone could have done.”

Batman turns, dropping Red Hood to the floor. “There are always other ways,” he says rather cryptically, and walks back to where Robin, Nightwing and Clark are standing. They are all looking at him with various degrees of worry in their eyes. “Red Hood, with me,” he says without looking back, knowing Jason will follow.

He almost misses the twitch. The girl who was crying on top of the infested’s body was _almost_ too silent. Batman notices too late that a chunk of her hand is missing. She twitches a second time. A second later, she throws herself at him. Batman turns his head and she bites in the cowl, leaving a mark on the fabric. She isn’t biting hard enough to touch skin. Yet.

Clark is here at almost the same time, so easily pulling her away from Batman it’s almost insulting. She trashes in his arm, turning to him. He faces her, intrigued and uncomfortable, her vacant eyes and clacking teeth making her look more animal than human. He doesn’t like it. He’s seen her cry a minute ago. He hovers above the floor, high enough that she won’t hurt anyone. She tries to bite him, aiming for his shoulder. Her teeth break on his skin, and they fall to the ground ridiculously, the action straight out of a children’s cartoon. It doesn’t stop her, and she keeps trying to get through the skin, not realizing she never will. He can see clearly that there’s no thinking behind it. The whole thing makes him more uncomfortable than he’s ever been, and he flies away from the dining room, out the kitchen, through the hallway and in the cave. It’s not that he thinks there is a way to save them. To bring them back to normal. It’s that if he allows himself not to even try, he’ll never forgive himself. That, and he doesn’t think he can do that to Bruce.

He opens the top of the glass case where Lee already is – a rather dreadful sight – and puts down the girl as gently as he can. He flies back out and hovers at eye level with the two infested, a grimace on his face. This is probably the worst thing he has ever had to do. He wonders if the two infested will bite _each other_ and is horrified at the thought. He almost tries to find another place to put the girl, but can’t make himself grab her again. He flies back out the cave, shaking off his need to vomit. He finds himself back in the kitchen faster than he wants to. Nightwing and Robin are trying to contain people inside the living room, but it’s getting harder to knock some sense into a scared crowd.

Batman points at him. “They need your help,” he just says, bent over maps and blue prints.

Clark knows the drill. He walks to the crowd, and just as he’s about to face them, flies a little above them. “Everyone, _please_ ,” he starts, earnest as always. He isn’t pretending, and perhaps this is what makes people listen. “We’re doing our best to secure this place for all of you. We can’t fight you and them at the same time.” The crowd slowly calms down, whispering between each other.

“We want to fight!” someone shouts.

“Speak for yourself,” someone yells back.

Clark looks over them, exasperated. He turns to Batman. Batman shakes his head _no_. Clark turns back to them. “Not yet. There’ll be a time for those of you who want to fight to fight back. But we don’t know enough to put you in danger yet.” There are still people arguing, and Clark sighs. His voice booms louder than anyone else. “ _Listen to me_. I can fight back all by myself. They can’t kill me. They can’t turn me into one of them. We’re trying to think things through so I can get you back to your houses alive and well. Don’t turn this into an unnecessary bloodbath.” Silence answers him at last, and he shakes his head. “We’re all scared, alright? But we’re all alive as well. That’s what matters. Let’s keep it that way, alright?”

“Easy to say, you’re indestructible,” someone mumbles loud enough for everyone to hear.

Clark is about to answer, but it is Batman who’s faster, sending a batarang flying over the crowd, hitting every wall on its way back to his hand. Another way to get a crowd to shut up. A more effective one, considering no one else opens their mouth. “You’re Gothamites. We’re our own kind of indestructible. Now stop bitching and let us work.” Batman stands in front of them, ready to take them one by one if they dare protest again. He knows that their anger comes from fear, and it will soon turn to tiredness. They will not stay alive long in closed quarters like this. As big as the Manor is, they won’t be able to live here forever. He knows he has to find a cure.

Clark decides to soften Batman’s harsh words. “If you’d be kind enough to make little groups so we can pass around food efficiently, that’d be great.” He watches people grunt as they organize themselves, sitting in huddles, calming each other down. “Thank you,” he adds before Batman pulls on his cape to bring him back to the kitchen, almost making him topple backward.

“I think you’ve done enough,” Batman says, closing the kitchen door behind the two of them. “Robin, Nightwing, we’re going to have to keep watch on all of them before something bad happens. Organize yourselves however you want, but I need someone around with Alfred at all times.” There’s a long silence that says they both have objections, but know Batman doesn’t want to hear them. “I’m going to start working on a cure right now.”

Jason, who has taken off his helmet and is sitting on the kitchen counter, chewing on a piece of bread, nods thoughtfully. “There’s still people to rescue in Gotham. Roy and Kori are waiting for me in town, they just needed someone to make sure the Manor was a safe place, so I’m going back.” Batman looks at him. He glares back. “Nice seeing y’all. Except you,” he says, pointing at Batman. He puts his helmet back on and makes Alfred bump knuckles with him.

“This is still killing,” Batman says.

Jason turns to him, unwavering. “And you’re still getting people killed. Same old.”

Dick puts himself between the two before they start fist fighting about it. “Batman, what you’re asking is physically impossible. There’s not enough of us. Jason, you need help with this rescue mission. Roy and Kori won’t be enough. Take Clark with you.” The two of them wave him off. He’s used to it. “I’m serious. If you _really_ want to save people, you know what to do.”

Clark turns to Jason, unsure of what to say. He’s never worked with him before, and hadn’t planned on doing that, ever. They don’t navigate in the same circles. “We need manpower,” Clark says. “It doesn’t matter what the plan is. We need more people to work with us.”

Batman grunts. “I asked Diana to come. There was an outbreak in Midway City, and it’s spreading fast. They’re all busy. We can’t ask anyone else.” He looks up at Clark. “I’m not even sure they can spare you.”

“They’ll make do,” Clark answers.

There’s a noise in the corridor and Tim turns around, opening the door slowly to check if it’s not another infested they missed. The door kicks open in his face and he trips backward. He’s faced with Jim Gordon, Renee Montoya and Harvey Bullock, bloody and sweaty, the three of them followed by a dozen GCPD officers.

“Perfect,” Batman says without acknowledging their presence. “More manpower. Nightwing, I’m counting on you to put things together and have officers check on refugees at all times. You know where to find me.” He walks out the kitchen, pushing Jim out of the way. Jim is used to it, but still groans. “Red Hood, a word.”

Jason follows him as Nightwing and Robin greets the officers, trying to calm Jim down before he starts screaming behind Batman like he usually does. Jason doesn’t wait to see what happens. He will always pick Batman over the GCPD. He holds grudges and he’s petty, but not petty enough to choose pigs over anyone else. They check no one is around before going down to the cave. Jason hasn’t been here in a while, and he doesn’t miss it. It feels comforting not to. He’s always scared he’s going to run into one of his own and think _damn. I miss my family_. But he doesn’t.

“Risky to bring everyone back to the Manor,” he says, sitting on the first chair he finds next to the big computers bathing the cave in a light blue glow.

“Didn’t have any other choice,” Batman answers. “How d’you know this would be a safe place?”

Jason shrugs. “Word on the street travels fast.” He pauses. “Knowing you, it’s not so farfetched that you’d secure the Manor before anything else.”

Batman looks at him. “I did my best to save as many people as I could.”

As if on cue, Lee bangs on the glass case behind the two of them. Jason turns. He watches and giggles. “Two walking-dead in my old memorial… I love the irony.”

“I don’t,” Batman answers. Had it been anyone else, he would have let the comment slide. But Jason always drives him out of his mind.

“You don’t have a sense of humor,” Jason answers, his voice muffled by his stupid mask.

Batman goes back to typing on his keyboard, trying to find a way to talk to Oracle. “This isn’t funny. People are dying.”

“People are always dying,” Jason spits out. “Is that what you wanted to tell me?”

“I want you to bring me back as many specimens as you can.” He looks up. “ _Alive_.”

“They’re not alive anymore,” Jason answers.

“They’re moving. They look at you and they react to what they see in consequence. They’re not healthy, but they’re alive.”

Jason shakes his head. “You’ve never known what being alive meant.”

“I know the difference between dead and alive.” Batman’s voice quivers, something that rarely happens. Tonight is not a good night. Seeing so many people come back from the dead to bring more people with them isn’t something he deals with as easily as he wishes he would. He can pretend, and he will, but this shakes him. Death and life are not forces that should be played with. Jason, sitting in front of him, cleaning his gun and acting smug, is the proof that they can be. And they have. Batman has known for a while now that death isn’t necessarily finite, that life isn’t just organs pumping blood in someone’s veins. But Batman likes to see black and white. It makes it easier to make otherwise hard choices. It makes it easier for his brain to avoid playing tricks on him.

“Keep telling yourself that,” Jason says. “I’m not bringing you zombies back alive. Too risky for nothing.”

“We need a cure,” Batman answers.

“You have two of them already to work on. Probably others in the garden or in the manors next to yours. There’s no need for me to go all the way and back. You’re just trying to make me ‘kill’—” he makes little quotes with his fingers, “less ‘people’.” Jason puts his gun back in his thigh holster and gets up. “Ask Superman. He’ll do anything you ask, and won’t die trying. I’ve done that before. Not again.”

Batman shakes his head. “You of all people should know that just because you died once doesn’t mean you can’t be alive again.”  

Jason stares at him. “Please compare me to soulless beings whose only goal is to bite others to death again.”

“You have the same vacant eyes when you talk to me,” Batman answers, and there is a hint of playful teasing in his tone.

“That’s because you suck the life out of me.” He stops. “Literally. Wow.” Batman loses his grin and Jason points finger guns at him. “See you later.”

Batman nods. “What is the street saying about Bruce Wayne?” He says the name like it’s foreign. “Do I need to put down the cowl for him to make an appearance?”

Jason looks at him a bit sadly. No matter the hard feelings between them, he has always wished Bruce could go back to being Bruce. That Batman could help instead of make everything worse. It’s a child’s wish, and he’s mad at himself for still thinking about it. “They’re saying Bruce Wayne’s dead.”

“Perfect,” Batman says, already thinking about all the additional time this will give him. “You can go.”

“They’re saying he died a hero,” Jason continues anyway. “That he sacrificed himself for people to be safe in his home.”

Batman looks over at Jason. “People are quick to find heroes in tragedy. They always have been.”

“You’d know,” Jason says finally, and leaves the cave, leaving no room for Batman to answer.

He doesn’t want to, anyway. Oracle isn’t answering either, and worry is clouding his mind, as well as tiredness and hunger. There aren’t a lot of things he _hates_ , but every evening when he comes back from patrol after having seen terrible things, his stomach growling is something he cannot stand. He has better things to focus on, other problems to think about, an ever growing to do list, neighborhoods to check, a journal to update, yet all his body wants is some food. It’s infuriating. His mind has always been separated from the rest of his body, always two steps ahead, and being dragged back by physical necessities somehow always takes him by surprise. He often wishes he could have Superman’s powers. The sheer possibility of it gives him goose bumps. He would never have to stop. He knows that would be the end of him. Deep down, he _knows_ he’s lucky he’s nothing but human. It takes a Clark Kent to be a Superman. But on nights where people rise from the dead, where old ghosts come to his home to tell him Bruce Wayne is a hero, on nights Clark looks at him with kindness in his eyes and grazes his skin with tenderness in his fingers, vulnerable is the last thing Batman wants to be. _Human and vulnerable aren’t synonymous_ , Clark would tell him. _You don’t know vulnerable,_ Batman would answer. _When you look at me like that,_ Clark would say, _I do._

He shakes the thoughts away, turning his chair to look at Lee. It is a sad sight. He has always loved her. She’s always been kind and harsh to him, like he thinks his mother would have been. She bangs on the glass, hurting herself in the process, and he puts his head in his hands. If he finds the one man responsible for this, he doesn’t know what he’ll do. Probably not something actually useful. He’s tired of his own empty threats. Somehow, this is his fault as well. He never _really_ stops any of his villains.

The entire thing looks like something Scarecrow could’ve cooked up, even though Batman has trouble seeing how he could benefit from it. He hasn’t had a lot of time to sit down and do the detective job he’s best at and it strikes him how well thought whoever it was’ plan is. He feels personally targeted by the entire thing, and suddenly he can’t be alone anymore. It happens rarely. He gets up, stumbling on his tired legs, his suit a sorry excuse for a costume falling apart slowly. He goes to walk back to the kitchen, seeking food and the comfort of brainstorming to keep him away from spiraling down a place where he won’t be any good.

“Bruce,” a familiar voice rings out. Batman raises his head. _Of course_. He thought about not being alone anymore, and Clark appeared. “I brought food.” _Of course_. “Do you want some?”

It hurts him to push the word out, but he does anyway. “Yes.” Clark walks to him, putting the tray on a little table next to the training mat. Batman sits back down, looking at Clark getting a plate for himself. “You don’t need it,” Batman snarls.

Clark smiles. “I would never pass on an opportunity to eat Alfred’s food,” he answers casually, as if Bruce’s comment wasn’t an insult. Clark gazes at him. “You can take off the cowl in here, you know.”

“I’m going back outside in a minute,” he says. “Not worth it.” Batman shoves food in his mouth, wanting to be done with it as fast as possible.

“It is always worth it,” Clark answers, reaching for him. He pulls the cowl off, not caring for Batman’s protests. And suddenly, Bruce’s eyes look back at him. He isn’t facing Batman anymore. He is facing a man who did not have time to steel the blue of his eyes fast enough to hide the fear and exhaustion. Clark puts his hand down, grazing Bruce’s cheeks with the tip of his finger. _Like old times_ , he thinks.

Bruce stares at him angrily, but he doesn’t have the heart to pick up another fight. It’s just the two of them, the sun is rising, and there are things that have yet to be done. “I hate it when you do that.”

“You didn’t always.”

“I do now,” Bruce insists. His voice doesn’t have the signature Batman growl anymore, and it makes his anger feel less scary. “You always act like this on nights where it’s harder, and you know I hate it. I don’t want your pity.”

Clark smiles. “You’ve always known it isn’t pity.”

“I don’t want your genuine empathy either. I want to find a cure, for Oracle to answer the phone, and for this nightmare to stop.”

Clark’s smile disappears. He’s thoughtful, trying to find a place to start. “I think you all need a shower and some rest. I’ll take care of security for the morning, and we can go rescue more people in the afternoon.”

Bruce looks at him. “People are waiting for us.”

Clark shakes his head no. “They can wait a bit longer. Jim has secured the GCPD building. They understand that they can’t reach the Manor right now. Red Hood and his team put up safe places across Old Gotham. The Manor is safer, of course, but it will do for a few hours.” Bruce is about to speak again when Clark cuts him off. “Before we think of moving anymore people, we want to see if the sun changes anything.”

Bruce stops eating. He hadn’t thought about waiting to see if environmental changes would affect their behavior. He’s been filming Lee and the other girl since they got here, trying to detect a pattern or a change over time, but he hasn’t been taking anything else into account so far. “Alright,” he says tentatively, because his eyelids are heavy and that he has to accept, like every morning, that sleep will come whether he likes it or not.

Clark smiles again. “Good.”

“I’ll sleep in the cave,” Bruce continues. “I want to be there if anything happens.” He frowns. “Can you detect infected with your heat vision?”

Clark shakes his head. “The brain’s the only source of warmth in them. The rest is cold and gray.”

“They’re still alive,” Bruce says to no one in particular. “They’re alive.” He hears Clark sighs and insists. “They are. I know it.”

“I hope you’re right,” Clark answers. “I always do.”

“But you never believe I am.”

“Until you prove me wrong,” Clark adds. “It often happens this way.”

Bruce gets up, rubbing his eyes. “I’m going to shower.”

Clark gets up, too, understanding this as the dismissal that it is. “Get some rest, too.”

“I’ll join you on the roof if I can’t sleep.”

“I _will_ knock you out,” Clark answers.

Bruce grins. “You’ll try.”

Clark smiles, too. He has smiled a lot tonight, which doesn’t surprise Bruce. It surprises him more that he managed to make _him_ grin. It’s not an easy task. There were times when it wasn’t that rare, when Clark had access to Bruce’s heart and smile freely, when Clark would have joined Bruce in bed, when those fingers wouldn’t have stopped at his chin. It felt like an eternity ago to Bruce. It felt like yesterday to Clark.

“Sleep well,” Clark finally says in the heavy silence between them. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

Bruce doesn’t answer and turns back around, already taking off the suit where he still can, tearing the rest away. He has others. “Make sure Nightwing and Robin get some sleep,” he says offhandedly. Clark knows it is because the cowl is finally off that he voices worries for his family. He knows he isn’t saying this as lightly as it sounds, either. Bruce is a worrier. “Be safe,” he adds right before slamming the bathroom’s door behind him, drowning out the two words.

Luckily, Clark has super hearing, and the confidence he hasn’t dreamed Bruce saying them. One of those he wasn’t born with. One of those he wouldn’t trade for the world. One of those he would miss if one too many nights were to take it away from him.

Lee bangs on the glass door, opening her forehead. No blood comes out.


End file.
